Remember when we were told that the Hi-Res update was "pushed back," then only mentioned once or twice since? Grimm hasn't even really talked about it, though I expect certain people have given him the stink eye to the point he's unwilling to comment.
You know, you could always just say, "Hey Grimm, what's up with the high res stuff?" either up in the art area or a PM. I respond to just about every question.
As for the high res stuff, it was pushed back pending completing the art demands of the current story. The story is still ongoing, but in regards to art, we're nearing completion of all the required assets at which point we'll return to working on high res stuff in addition to all the other things I have been working on for UO. I don't know if you follow our tweets, butwhle we've been working on all the story stuff, I've been in the process of implementing some serious optimizations for the EC client Human/Elf animations. Which has required me to re-render everything all over again, but the result should be a little sharper and cleaner animation graphics, and a reduction of disk footprint. This is also an opportunity to get as many animation bugs cleared out as possible, so there are going to be a lot of wins on this - and I haven't even mentioned the back end stuff that's terrific.
The high res environment artwork is a collaboration of art and engineering, so that's going slightly slower than if it were all either engineering or art alone. But as we get things to show, you can bet we'll start posting.
-Grimm
